Outline

Introduction

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was one of the most influential
battles in military history. Bien Phu marked the end of the First Indo-Chinese
War and left the French decimated and embarrassed. Bien Phu was a symbol
throughout the world that small guerrilla forces like the Viet Minh could turn
away even the largest of imperial powers. Dien Bien Phu was a huge military
victory for the Viet Minh and forced the French to relinquish all colonial
control of the region.

Military Buildup- Operation “Castor”

Occupation of Dien Bien Phu began November 20, 1953 and was
code-named operation Castor. Dien Bien Phu was chosen as a key military position
because of its location to Laos and the Viet Minh supply lines. The French
believed if they could secure a position there, they could strangle the Viet
Minh supply lines. The rough forested and mountainous terrain also was desired
because it was believed to prevent an attack with artillery. Troops and supplies
were delivered to Dien Bien Phu by parachute. The initial buildup took three
days, and by the end of it more than 9,000 French troops were present and
working on fortification. The fort was fortified in to eight separate sections
and two landing strips. The French took as much high ground as they could and
appeared to have a very defensive position. They equipped each of the eight
stations with artillery and set minimum troop requirements for each out post.
The fort became a symbol of French power. After the final fortifications, more
supplies and troops were dropped raising the number of troops present to
13,000.The fort was toured numerous times by French diplomats and military
strategists and was believed to be impenetrable (CNN 2001).

The Battle

The battle began on March 13, 1954 and would not end until
May 8, 1954.The attacks were expected, because in the week before the battle the
presence of Viet Minh became more obvious. The first day artillery fire was
extremely heavy, almost 9,000 shells were fired and it lasted throughout the
night. The first position to fall was Beatrice, the northeastern bolt, it was
overrun in a matter of hours and Gabrielle, the northern bolt, soon followed
suite. This quick Viet Minh victory was aided by the under strengthening of
these two positions and an artillery shell which killed nearly all the
commanders of the two bolts, landing in the command bunker. Reinforcements were
quickly parachuted in, but they suffered high casualties. The Viet Minh
continued their assault on the French positions and continued to hammer the
bolts with artillery. The French had not expected the Viet Minh to entrench
themselves, but they had secretly moved huge artillery and anti-aircraft guns
surrounding the fort through difficult conditions. Their positions were also
aided by the surrounding wilderness (Simpson 1996 p78).
French air strikes were ineffective at removing artillery, they had great
difficulty locating their targets and came under constant fire. The Viet Minh
then began to attack the airstrips realizing the only troops and supply lines
Dien Bien Phu had existed from the air. They began the airstrip assault on March
18th and did not stop until it was destroyed and captured on March
23.The last plane into Dien Bien Phu landed on the second airstrip on March
28th and was destroyed. The French mounted an offensive on the
28th attacking anti-aircraft positions and won a marginal victory. On
the 31st the French recaptured two bolts, but later had to evacuate
them because of lack of reinforcements. Frontal attacks
then came to a halt as the Viet Minh changed their focus. They began
concentrating on the supply lines. The Viet Minh commanders would later refer to
this strategy as slowly bleeding the “dying elephant”. They had made the
French helpless. They no longer could easily receive reinforcements or
supplies from Hanoi so they were forced to subsist on the few resources left
inside their crumbling fortress. Wounded and dead piled up in the French
positions as shelling continued. The situation became bleaker as the
anti-aircraft forced planes to fly higher and provided less accurate drops.
Supplies and troops ended up behind enemy lines and under fire. The French
command was forced to gradually draw their defenses closer as Viet Minh
artillery continued concentrated on the sunken perimeter (Alle 2001).
During the last week of April the monsoon arrived.
Trenches became hazards and bunkers collapsed; the shelling began causing
mudslides. French air power continued to be inhibited by weather, artillery, and
the excessive distance between Hanoi and Dien Bien Phu. The last replacements,
4306 soldiers, parachuted in between March 14 and May 6 did not even make up for
the loses suffered between those dates, 5500.The French saw that defeat was
eminent, but they sought to hold on till the Geneva peace meeting, which took
place April 26.The last French offensive took place on May 4, but was relatively
ineffective. The Viet Minh then began to hammer the fort with newly acquired
Russian rocket launchers. The six-tubed launchers shattered bunkers and
what was left of French moral. The fall took two days, May 6th and
7th the French fight on but are eventually overrun by a huge frontal
assault (Alle 2001).

Captivity

The prisoners taken at Dien Bien Phu were the greatest number
the Viet Minh had ever captured. They made up one third of all those captured in
the course of the eight-year war. The prisoners were divided into groups. Those
that were considered fit, including lightly wounded, were marched 250 to 400
miles in daily stages of 15 to 25 flanked by armed guards. The prisoners
were forced to march over mountainous muddy terrain, still exhausted from the
long conflict. The Viet Minh refused medical attention to the prisoners and
forbid fires, hoping to not attract attention. The prisoners died in hundreds
from exhaustion and wounds as they were mercilessly marched. The wounded,
4,436, were placed in tents and given triage care with eventual intervention by
the Red Cross. The Red Cross was allowed to take 838 of the wounded, but the
other 3,578 were incorporated into the march. Those that were not fit to walk
were packed in trucks 20 to 25 at a time with no consideration for the nature or
seriousness of their wounds (Alle 2001). On May
26th the prisoners were divided into camps and trucked off. Many
soldiers’ wounds coarsely bandaged came open as blood, injury induced vomiting,
and hemoraging occurred. The physical and psychological agony of transport
and imprisonment was in many ways far worse than the battle itself. The
diseases acquired along the prisoner transport and march were dysentery, jaundice, malaria, tuberculosis,
scurvy, beri-beri, malnutrition, and neuro-psychiatric problems to name only the
most common illnesses. In addition, there were flies, lice, tics, fleas, rats,
mosquitoes, maggots and other vermin, scabies, filth, hunger, thirst, bedsores,
harassment and mental torture along the way (Alle 2001).
The POW camps were crude. They were not typical European camps characterized by
barbed wire, guards, and watchtowers. Prisoners were housed in straw huts and
only released for work detail. The camps had few guards, but the terrain and
fatigue prevented any escape. They had to survive on very little food and water.
The prisoners were also forced to denounce their actions by recalling
incriminating conduct, sign manifestos, confess to crimes committed against the
Vietnamese people, accuse their fellow soldiers of evil deeds and even accuse
themselves of misdeeds they hadn't done in order to please their captors.
Prisoners were invited to petition Ho Chi Minh for clemency to emphasize his
great kindness (Alle 2001). The prisoners were also
systematically insulted and belittled. They were called imperialist
soldiers, war criminals, bloody mercenaries, assistants of American imperialism,
and colonial dogs. The soldiers were told they had to pay for their sins
and become politically re-educated. The Vietminh took as much time as was
needed. During imprisonment and re-education soldiers were forced to glorify
Marxism, put up with insults and name-calling, harassment, belittlement of the
French Army, constant ridicule and forced to chant anti-colonial slogans.
Captivity was morally exhausting. Brain washing was a daily event and weakened
minds and bodies offered less resistance. The Vietminh measured out doses of
mental torture, hope, disappointment and harassment of all types breaking even
the strongest men. The conditions were so bad during imprisonment that
moral and health began to deteriorate, the healthy become sick, the sick become
bed-ridden, and the bed-ridden died. The captivity was in many ways worse than
losing the battle (Fall 1988 p230).

Conclusion

The battle of Dien Bien Phu was one of the most significant
battles in military history. It set many precedents. Ending the Indo-Chinese
War, Dien Bien Phu proved the power of a guerilla force over an imperial power.
This victory gave Vietnam great confidence in its ability to throw off colonial
rule and set the stage for the Second Indo Chinese War for control of South
Vietnam. The buildup was great and the preparation long, but the French grossly
underestimated their enemy and made the grave mistake of placing their base so
far from Hanoi. The battle raged for two months as the Viet Minh executed a
stunning victory. The French defeat was shocking and brutal yet pale in
comparison to the treatment of prisoners after the conflict. Thousands of French
soldiers died marching and riding to prison camps, and many others wish they
had. The captivity of the French by the Viet Minh was completely inhumane. Dien
Bien Phu was one of the greatest battles in military history and should have
been examined more thoroughly before the U.S. entered Vietnam (Simpson 1996 p7).